Shay Downer & Bonnie Hanlon

To highlight the wealth of artistic talent in Hume community Gee Lee-Wik Doleen Gallery hosts two exhibitions show-casing the work of two recipients of Hume Arts Awards 2016. Both women are highly-accomplished in technique, searching for perceptual universalities in the the human experience.

Shay Downer - Visible Mending

Shay Downer is an emerging local artist specialising in figurative art and portraiture. Shay strives to explore human connections in her work. Her objective is to tell a story, to reach out and touch someone with what she has created. Her work succeeds when it evokes a strong emotional response, or initiates a moment of deep reflection from the observer.

Shay prefers the tactility of charcoal and is captivated by the idea of 'sculpting' the surface of the canvas. Pushing and pulling the medium creates the illusion of three-dimensional form. In this exhibition she explores a collection of emotional truths that serve as a reminder of our vulnerabilities, and that we are not isolated in these experiences. The viewers response to this work could be very personal and intimate, or more generalised and global. It may even be a bit of both.

In 2016 Shay was a finalist in the Rick Amor Drawing Prize (Ballarat Art Gallery), Paul Guest Prize (Bendigo Art Gallery) and was a recipient of a Hume Arts Award Professional Development Grant.

Shay also enjoys teaching drawing classes in a couple of locations in Sunbury.

Bonnie Hanlon - Chemical Chance

Bonnie Hanlon's intricate works in watercolour and cotton thread aim to highlight our tiny but incredibly significant place in the universe, operating under the premise that whether or not there is life in the universe beyond Earth, the fact that the elements coalesced in the ways that hey did and that we exist at all is simply astounding!

This collection of work explores origins of life in the universe, in terms of the chemical chance that was the catalyst for the world around us, the world that spawned us and that sustains us and only exists because of the chemical reactions of dying stars.

Each work illustrates an element crucial to life on Earth, depicted in the context of their own origin; a dying star, collapsing under its own gravity and releasing ever-heavier and more complex elements out into space, now free to regroup and bond and grow in to planets and new stars.

Each painting in this series is a unique composition of stars with carefully placed points of light that form constellations depicting the elements essential to life, each element-constellation is hand stitched in to the composition, offering a juxtaposition of scale with the sub-atomic placed against the cosmic.